ELL: Re: Dialects and languages

[Robert Moore]

It was the late Max Weinreich (brother of Uriel
Weinreich, author of the great _Languages in Contact_
[The Hague: Mouton, 1953]) who long ago said that a
language was a dialect with an army and a navy.  I
don't have a reference to hand, but am certain that
the phrase is his.

Max Weinreich, by the way, helped to found the YIVO
cultural institute, dedicated to the study and
preservation of Yiddish-language learning, performing
arts, and literature -- one of the earliest of all
such "communities of concern" organized around an
"endangered" linguistic variety (in this case, Yiddish
in the US, specifically the Lower East Side of New
York).

YIVO still exists and is active in New York ("Google"
it and find out).

Robert Moore
Brooklyn, NY



--- Joan Smith/Kocamahhul
<j.smithkocamahhul at ling.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Jonathan Bobaljik and Rob Pensalfini cited this
> saying (a language is a
> dialect with an army and a navy) in their intro to
> Papers on language
> endangerment and the maintenance of linguisitc
> diversity (MIT working
> papers in Linguistics, 1996, pg 2), but they don't
> give a reference for
> it.
>
> Joan
>
> Julia Sallabank wrote:
>
> > There's a saying 'a language is a dialect with an
> army'. Does anyone
> > know where it originated? Best wishes Julia
> >
> >      ----- Original Message -----
> >      From: Nakerite at aol.com
> >      To:
> endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au
> >      Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 2:44 PM
> >      Subject: ELL: Question and Announcement
> >       Hello.
> >
> >            I am not a trained linguist, but I am
> inerested in
> >      knowing if there are criteria for
> dertermining when changes
> >      in a language consitute a dialect, and when a
> dialect
> >      becomes a new language. My interest is mostly
> in Spanish
> >      dialects. For example, is Ladino a different
> language? or is
> >      just Spanish written in Hebrew script? Are
> the Spanglish
> >      dialects real dialects or just street
> jargons. Does
> >      translating from the standard version of a
> language into a
> >      dialect of that language consititutes a real
> translations.
> >      And should endangered dialects be saved?
> >            A new list called Language Rights has
> been created.
> >      The purpose of the Language Rights list is to
> discuss such
> >      topics as Language Rights, the politics of
> language, the
> >      presecution and demise of minority languages,
> and general
> >      lingusitics. Language Rights is the concept
> that individuals
> >      and communities have certain fundamental
> rights in relation
> >      to the language(s) that they use or wish to
> use.
> >
> >      Language_Rights-subscribe at yahoogroups.com
> >
> >      Patrick R. Saucer
> >
> --
> Joan Smith/Kocamahhul
> Department of Linguistics
> University of Canterbury
> Private Bag 4800
> Christchurch
> NEW ZEALAND
>



> e-mail: j.smithkocamahhul at ling.canterbury.ac.nz
> tel: 00-64-3-3667-001 ext 8321
> fax: 00-64-3-364-2969
>
>
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